Pedagogical content beliefs about reading instruction and their relation to gains in student achievement

Behrmann Lars, Souvignier Elmar

Zusammenfassung

Teachers' pedagogical content beliefs about reading instruction are likely topredict progress in student achievement. Thus, in this study, 15 pre-service teachers gavereading promotion to low-performing sixth- and seventh-graders over a time period of6 months. The pre-service teachers' pedagogical content beliefs were then related to theirstudents' reading achievement gains. In contradiction to previous findings, the resultsdemonstrate direct-transmissive beliefs to be positively related with student achievement.Finally, whether there is an influence of practical teaching experiences on the development ofpre-service teachers' pedagogical content beliefs was examined. For that reason, the beliefdevelopment during the 6-month period was compared between pre-service teachers with andwithout teaching experience. Results show teaching pre-service teachers' beliefs to havedeveloped away from constructivistic positions and toward a direct-transmissive direction.The beliefs of student teachers without teaching experience, on the contrary, tended to slightlydevelop in diametrically opposed directions. Implications of the results are discussed.